A few weeks ago the Sun's eyes and ears at city hall, Anne-Marie McQueen, reported that council was looking to get a jumpstart on its 2003 budget deliberations. Given the rush job that passed for a budget this year, this desire for a more thorough budget process is to be applauded. In conversations with several councillors over the past month, each one without fail has expressed some frustration with the budget process in place now.

Think about it, three months passed before council finally approved its budget for the current calendar year. In theory, twenty-five percent of the city's budget was already chewed up even before the budget was passed thereby limiting council's flexibility to find savings and ensure the best value for taxpayers. But to rehash this is to cry over spilt milk. Instead, let's offer some advice for next year.

The first thing council should do is instruct staff to prepare a long-range financial plan. This plan should include an analysis of the current economic environment with assumptions outlining the city's near-term, mid-term and long-range economic growth prospects. As well, the current status of our depleted reserves and debt portfolio should be included to give council (and the public) a better picture of our burden of indebtedness.

Projections for the demand and use of city services - hard and soft - should be laid out for council and taxpayers to see. As well, a comprehensive review of the city's capital needs for the next 10 years should be included. This review must fully cost out needs for new infrastructure as well as the bill for full preventive maintenance of current roads, plant and equipment.

Of course, various revenue generation strategies should be part ‘n parcel in this long range plan that identifies how the city can meet its operational and capital needs. These strategies should include options such as selling assets, cutting services, raising taxes, incurring more debt and/or inclusion of more alternate service delivery.

Council was right to grumble about the hyper-speed 2002 budgeting exercise. But simply starting sooner next fall for 2003 in the absence of more concrete information won't really make a difference. Having a report as recommended above will!

This is even more crucial when we consider that 2003 is also an election year and council cannot be allowed to get away with another raid the reserves and ignore the future budgeting exercise. By identifying the real operational and capital needs of the city over the next decade, taxpayers and voters will have a clearer lens through which to view candidates' promises of tax cuts or new facilities in their local ward.

As well, wide public circulation of the long-range plan through the media will also serve to inform Ottawans of some of the stark choices facing our city in the coming years. And if Mayor Chiarelli and his colleagues across the country are unsuccessful in securing greater respect (read: Dollars and powers) from their federal and provincial capitals, the time to make these choices will come sooner rather than later.

Along with this plan, council itself must set some benchmarks and policies to guide its actions during the forthcoming budget deliberations.

First up transparency and access. Making all documents available (which it usually does) in a timely fashion is paramount. As well, ensuring that the budget documents are available at regional client service centres and easily retrievable and downloadable from the city website is important.

Second, council must address the issue of sustaining its reserves. Just as you and I have a bank account (or at least try to) for a rainy day, so does council. But this past year, the politicians down on Laurier Avenue drained down the city's reserves with no plan whatsoever to replenish them. This cannot happen again. Council must identify a mechanism to divert some of its present tax collections back to the reserves envelope.

Finally, council must ensure that the official plan is prepared and finalized before the next budget cycle. The official plan must truly speak to our future aspirations which are more than simple and sometimes unworkable smart growth concepts. Witness the recent spat between developers and the Mayor as a testament to the fact that growing up, not out works on paper, but may not work when it comes to developers designs for communities which respond to our demands for housing.

These aspirations do include good highways, clean and safe streets, and community facilities like hockey rinks, ball parks and libraries, just to name a few. But maintaining and building these facilities will cost money, which is why a long range plan is so important to guide next year's budgeting process. The last thing we need in an election year are candidates for mayor and council promising us the moon and the stars when they can't even deliver a pizza without draining the reserves.